How AI Will Go From Influencing 20% to Making 90% of Your Decisions | Steve Lucas, Boomi CEO

AI is going to go from influencing 20% of my decisions to making 90% of them for me. Here at HumanX, there are literally hundreds of companies demonstrating thousands of technologies for AI can run your business. Steve Lucas, CEO of Boomi. You recently actually reintroduced Boomi as the leading data activation company. Why the shift and why now? Boomi has over 30,000 customers all over the world. We move more data per second for those 30,000 customers than the entire Visa card network globally. If you got to get your data on a GLP1 so it gets skinny, but gets your data going. Get it to the gym, get it working out. I love that. Get your data to the gym. Get it to the gym. The new slow, good. Yeah. It's Sophie with DTM Now. We're here at HumanX, the AI conference, speaking with leading voices in tech and bringing you what you need to know about AI in 2026. Steve, how did you do now? Thank you. Thank you. It's real to be here. Yeah. Likewise. Likewise. They're all to have you here. And now you said before that 2026 is the AI moves from pilot to production. And we're sitting here today at HumanX together and AI conference and the same notion as being echoed from leaders. Now, what do people not in the room need to know? Because the GTM now audiences, hundreds of thousands of people globally and realistically, not every single person is here with us in San Francisco. So why 2026? What do people need to know? I think we've gone from AI not existing, more or less for most of us a few years ago. Now, if you're open AI or anthropic, they'd say, wow, you know, we've been doing this forever. Yeah, since 2017. I mean, AI up until large language models, pre-train transformers, it was more of a, yeah, somebody somewhere does a thing. And now for at least the past several years, every human being, at least every human being with a phone or a computer, as experienced are used AI some way somehow. So that's, it's become the dominant kind of technology ever, H. Now, AI is shifting from interesting, curiosity, rive a song in Star Wars language to help me run my business. That's been the big pivot over the past few years. And of course, you can't go 10 feet without, at least hearing someone say, AI agent. Yes. But agents, they're this undefined concept right now. And agent could be a weather agent that just tells you it's sunny today or it's raining, bring a jacket. But agents can go much further now here at human X. There are literally hundreds of companies demonstrating thousands of technologies where AI can run your business. So really where we are right now is where in this interesting space where I feel like I'm as a CEO, I'm used to AI influencing my decisions. I'm, I'm there. AI is influencing my decisions. But we're very quickly going to go from that to two years from now, AI is going to go from influencing 20% of my decisions to making 90% of them for me. This is going to happen to a certain degree and I know you sense it because you're here. But when you're here, you can see the future already. Fantastic. It's true. We are very much so here. And you know, Steve, you're actually an author. You've authored a book. I actually have the book at my house. Great read. But in your book, digital impact, do you actually argue that the AI revolution that we're talking about will stall if fragmentation isn't actually solved? Yeah. So what is actually bluffing people? Yeah. Well, I think the question and you can answer this as well as everybody that's watching this video, which is do you feel like at the company you work for today? And it's not a bad thing. It's just a realistic question. As a human, do you have access to the data that you need in real time? Is it accurate? Does it help you get your job done? And the vast majority of the time when I ask that question, people say, no. And that's for human intelligence. Right. Artificial intelligence works thousands of times. If not millions of times faster than humans do in terms of its thought. It's modeling. It's decisions. So if you can't get your data right, if it's all over the place, if it's inaccurate, if it's not available in real time, how is this going to work for AI? If it's ineffective for humans, it will be detrimental to your deployment of AI. So our focus is building what we call an AI or data activation platform. It's let's get this data that you have. Let's get it into shape. Right. This means if you got to get your data on a GLP one, so it gets skinny, but gets your data going, get it to the gym, get it working out. So our data activation platform literally connects everything in your company, automate your data between all of your systems, and then feeds that data, the valuable data to AI in real time. That's when you know you're ready for what everybody here is calling the agent driven enterprise or the agentic enterprise. I love that. Get it to the gym. That's the new slogan. Yeah. Yeah. Incredible. Incredible. But for people, how do they actually know if their company data is ready for AI? Is there a bench work? Well, you know, there's these, they're originally a long, like if you go way back and anyone that's sitting in front of you on your phone or computer type in the four V's of data, things like veracity and volumes of the accuracy of data. Those four V's of data have long ruled the data landscape as rules for how you think about data. And I think we're getting to the four C's of AI, things like connected things like contextual, these, these matter. So there's no look. I think knowing is hard. What I would say is this, I tend to use that previous answer where I think about, well, if my data doesn't work for me as a human, how is it going to work for AI? So that's a good benchmark. But I think the three things to think about in the world of AI, simple questions. Anyone can ask an answer. Are my systems connected? And if the answer is no, you're not ready for AI. Are my processes automated? If the answer is no, you're not ready for AI. And then are my systems a-gen-tick? But everybody's rushing to agent or a-gen-tick driven, right? Everybody's well, I don't want to fall behind an AI. So let me go there. The world is going to shift it. Something I mentioned a second ago with that great question you asked is, are you the type of company where AI is kind of influencing your decisions? Or are you moving to become a business where AI is driving and even making your decisions? If you aren't the latter, you are already in trouble. I think some people listening might be a little scared now. Time to get moving. Just instilling fear. Time to get moving. Well, I wrote to you also layer on another prerequisite around the AI revolutionists that change happens at the speed of trust. Yes. What do you mean by that? Well, and you mentioned the book Digital Impact that I wrote and the subtitle of that is The Human Elements of AI-driven transformation. What no one factors into this whole equation is how we feel. And look, as humans, we feel nervous. We feel threatened. We read stories about AI taking our jobs. These are real human emotions. And these things matter. And when I say change only happens at the speed of trust, that means that if I don't trust something, it's not happening. We build a technology using AI at Boone internally. And it was to help our customer success managers, the people that look after our customers, help them be more effective. We named the AI agent, a CSM or customer success manager, agent. The torches, the pitchforks, the weeping and whaling that came after that, it was pretty strong. There was a big protest and a lot of pushback. No one wanted to use it. And the reason no one wanted to use it is because they thought we were launching something to take their jobs. When in reality, it was, help them be more effective at their jobs. So part of it is the positioning and it's how people feel. 99 times out of 100, I think AI will drive human acceptance. If we pause and remember, it's how people feel about this new technology. 100%. At GTM Fund, we invested the very early stages of the startup journey. And one critical and surprisingly complicated decision can be naming your startup. Founders often spend weeks chasing the perfect dot com domain only to overpay your subtle forname that doesn't quite click and also potentially pivot names down the line. Before you spend a ton securing a dot com domain, I recommend checking out dot tech domains. Dot tech tells the world your customers, your investors, anyone Googling you that you're building in technology. It's very simple. So if you're building a tech startup, this is a great option for you. You can secure your dot tech domain today from any registrar of your choice. Still human. And that's I mean, big part of the name human. And she's humanizing the prop. That's right. And as efficient as AI can make your company, the reality is right now, humans still make the vast majority of decisions today. Humans will implement AI. And if you want to be that AI first AI forward company, if you're not bringing humans along, then you won't succeed either. Fine line to walk. Definitely. Yeah. And Steve, Boomi's been known for, I mean, well over a decade now as a leading integration platform, but you recently actually reintroduced Boomi as the leading data activation company. Yeah. We move more data per second for those 30,000 customers than the entire Visa card network globally times 2, we move a lot of data. And as I step back and think about what's valuable, what is the service that we provide to our customers that's valuable to them? Well, moving data to the right place at the right time, to the right person or yes, AI, that's what we do. We activate data. And if you think about it further, most companies they collect data, but it's just dormant. It sits in a database, it's not in motion, it's not doing anything. Putting data in motion is when it creates value. It does something more than just occupy space in a database. So for me, it really is about activating your data, moving it to the places where it will have an impact. Otherwise, I keep it. >> Very true, very true. And what is one AI workflow that you're actually using yourself as a CEO that's been transformative for you? >> AI workflows that are transformative for me. Well, one is the ability to just send any expense reports or receipts in and they automatically get approved as the vein of my existence. But I am, it's interesting. Over the past 24, 48 hours, I found, this is an interesting thing. Boomey is a near kind of 20 year old software company. We have a lot of customers. And those customers have bought software from us with different contracts over different periods of time. We've acquired companies. They've had their own contracts. I heard this from one of our account managers. He said to me weeks ago, you know, one of our big challenges is understanding which customers have which contracts and which rights to which software. For the first time in a long time, I picked up Clawed Code and started writing code myself. Now, granted, Clawed wrote the code. But I had Clawed build a system that looked at contracts across multiple sources and had Clawed build a series of agents that would help our sales reps understand what customers had what rights to what products. I did that. Now, that's not a breakthrough thing, but the fact that I can step back, see a business problem as a CEO and in my spare time on an airplane do it, this world is changing. - It is. It is. And it probably feels so good to just get in there and actually brace your mind. - It does. It's a cathartic thing. Yeah. - 100%. For anyone looking to follow along with Boomey or yourself, where can they find you? - Well, you can always love this question. You can always find me. First of all, I post constantly on LinkedIn. I'm active every day. So please find me there. Number one, boomey.com number two, please come check out what we're building in the world of AI from agents to agenteic governance. There's so much that we've built out right now. We can't wait to innovate with you. So hit us up, follow us on LinkedIn. - I love it. Thank you, Steve. - Thank you.